Jeremiah Kittredge, one of the leaders of the charter movement, was just terminated as leader of “Families for Excellent Schools.” (FES was banned from Massachusetts for campaign finance violations in the charter referendum of 2016 and fined nearly $500,000.)
Politico writes:
“For years, Jeremiah Kittredge has been a darling of the national charter school movement’s wealthiest and most powerful benefactors.
“Since starting the pro-charter organization Families for Excellent Schools in 2011, he’s courted reform-friendly governors and members of Congress, funded his group with tens of millions of dollars from America’s wealthiest financiers and philanthropic organizations, and emerged as perhaps the closest ally to the country’s most well-known charter school leader, Success Academy CEO Eva Moskowitz.
“That all ended Wednesday, when Bryan Lawrence — a banker who sits on Families for Excellent Schools’ board — blasted out a statement to reporters that Kittredge had been “terminated” following an outside law firm’s investigation into allegations of “inappropriate behavior toward a non-employee.”
“That incident took place last November at a Washington, D.C., hotel during the Philos conference, an annual gathering hosted by Education Reform Now, the policy affiliate of the advocacy organization Democrats for Education Reform, sources tell POLITICO.
“A woman who attended the conference wrote a Facebook post a few weeks afterward, describing an encounter with another conference attendee. Five sources with knowledge of the situation confirmed that the attendee referenced in the post was Kittredge. The sources requested anonymity due to the sensitivity of the topic.
“Just three weeks ago, at the single ed reform conference I attend each year, another attendee, a guy much younger than me, sticks his head in my chest, tells me my boobs are supple (seriously? Who uses that word?) and then rides up an elevator with me late at night commenting on how big my boobs are,” the female attendee wrote.”
Who knew that Camp Philos could be so racy, boorish, and stupid? Power corrupts.
Calling Campbell Brown! She made her name complaining about sexual predators in public schools. Now charters need her too.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
You know who uses the word “supple”? A guy who went to Brown, that’s who.
It’s curious how Kittredge quickly got the boot while Loeb who harasses black elected officials in his free time gets to stay. I suppose that’s the difference between those who pay the bills and those who don’t.
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Very true.
Read the Politico article closely:
“Lawrence’s Wednesday statement announcing Kittredge’s firing was sent several hours AFTER a POLITICO reporter asked a Families for Excellent Schools spokesman about allegations against Kittredge.”
Despite Families for Excellent Schools knowing about this for months, it was completely covered up UNTIL the reporter from Politico asked about the allegations.
It seems as if there had been an unspoken agreement that Kittredge could quietly leave and take a job directly with Eva Moskowitz as opposed to doing her bidding indirectly. Until this became public.
And does Success Academy spokeswoman Ann Powell ever get tired of playing the Sarah Huckabee Sanders role for Eva Moskowitz?
“Ann Powell, a spokeswoman for Success, said that Success was considering offering Kittredge a position before Moskowitz learned about the investigation and said that Kittredge was not formally offered a job by Success.
Moskowitz and other top leadership at Success “did not know of the investigation or any other allegations against Kittredge until the day Families for Excellent Schools terminated Kittredge,” Powell said.”
Sure, they were “shocked! shocked!” to learn that gambling was going on.
I think what Ann Powell means is that Success was considering offering Kittredge a position before Moskowitz learned that a Politico reporter had directly asked Families for Excellent Schools about the allegation. I think that Ann Powell means is that Success was considering offering Kittredge a position before Moskowitz learned that the allegations against him were going public.
But if Ann Powell ever loses her job with Eva Moskowitz because she gets to be the next one thrown under the bus, maybe she can work for Sarah Huckabee Sanders. They are two of a kind.
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FROM THE POLITICO ARTICLE referenced ABOVE:
“Kittredge has been involved in multiple consensual sexual relationships with colleagues throughout his relatively brief career in education reform, including at least one employee who reported directly to him, according to five sources with direct knowledge of the situation.”
Boy, did this guy pick the wrong year(s) to be a sleazeball !
Didn’t he know that this stuff ain’t gonna fly no’ mo’?
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This “bad penny” almost got passed off to Success. He will probably wind up in another part of the country, sort of like Rhee and her crooked husband.
Thanks for the sarcasm aimed at Campbell Brown in your closing remark! It was a well deserved barb.
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“passed off” is not the right word.
More like providing a nice little paid landing for him.
Does anyone believe they had no idea this guy about this guy? They were closer to him than anyone else.
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This woman who ratted him Kittredge forgot, or never learned that unspoken agreement all corporate ed. reformers adhere to:
“What happens at Philos STAYS at Philos.”
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This guy’s hysterical. When confronted with the fact that the charter schools whom he champions and for whom he lobbies have no or almost no special ed students, Kittredge replied:
(NOT a parody, but what he actually said)
“Well, you should focus on traditional public schools. You’ll find that over 50% of traditional public schools have a less-than-average percentage of special students.”
No kidding, dumbass!!! That’s the definition of average!
That’s like Eva Moskowitz saying:
(parody, NOT what she actually said)
*”At Success Academy, we’re proud of the percentage success rate of our students. It’s an establish fact that 100% of the Success Academy students whom we do not kick out prior to graduation end up graduating.”
Kittredge’s “less-than-average” quote (ABOVE) can be found near the end of this (at 4:28):
Kittredge said this during a radio interview.
However, unbeknownst to radio viewers, after Kittredge thought the show was over and he wrongly assumed the mics were off, he continued talking to the female interviewer:
KITTREDGE: “Say, Baby, I really like the sound of your voice, and I was just wondering if you looked as good as you sounded, so I checked out your pics on Google Images, and .. Whoa! Bam! Surprise! Ya know, you’ve got one smokin’ hot body on you, so whadda ya say we meet for drinks at my condo on the Upper East Side .. ?”
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Wait a minute. I am having trouble with this average thing. Lets just say that the public schools are represented by ten schools. Schools 1-5 serve 1-5 students with special needs. School number 9 serves 1 special needs student . Schools 6, 7,8, and 10 serve 10, 15,10 and 20 special needs students respectively. That means that the average of all the schools is between 7 and 8 students. Over 50% (6) schools serve less than the average number of special needs students for those ten schools. I didn’t listen to his whole argument, but I am guessing he is trying to justify the lack of special ed students being served by Success Academies. Since we know nothing about how special needs students are served in the public schools, the argument makes no sense anyway even if the numbers are actually factual. They are meaningless! How many special needs students are served in centralized locations related to their disabilities? It makes no sense to scatter them throughout the district under certain circumstances. If we just look at students who are served by the neighborhood schools, what conclusions can be drawn? A valid argument would be that for the communities from which Success is drawing they are not drawing or taking a proportional number of special needs students with similar disabilities. His average argument makes no sense.
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speduktr,
Yes, you noticed something that the math-challenged education reporters always fall for.
Depending on the circumstances, Success Academy will compare itself to a single school or the “average of all schools” to promote its brand. It depends what makes it look better.
For example, with their extraordinarily high attrition rates, they always go for a large “average” of public schools and say “we’re lower than average”. They would never compare their high attrition to the attrition on similarly “top performing” public schools because they would look bad. But if they average in every public school — including the ones that serve the most transient populations — then their high attrition seems reasonable. So reporters say “wow, look they have below average attrition”.
But then they do just the opposite when it comes to the number of at-risk and special needs and ELL children they serve. If they were consistent, they would do as they do with attrition rates and compare the number of special needs kids they serve with the NYC average. And they would look very, very bad.
So instead, they choose a single public school that happens to have a low number of special needs kids and says “look, we serve more than this one”. And when you point out that if they want to use that school as a comparison, then Success Academy has an attrition rate that is twice as high as that school, the Success Academy hypocrites say ‘but when you talk about attrition rates you have to compare us to ALL schools in the city, but when you talk about serving kids with special needs, you must only compare us to the single public school of our choosing.”
What’s sad is that education reporters fall for this and dutifully report exactly the comparison that Success Academy wants to make to cover up how dishonest their boasts about being better than every single public and charter school in NYC are.
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Good analysis, NYC PSP
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Thank you! It frustrates me to no end that Eva Moskowitz gets away with this because education reporters don’t understand numbers and statistics. Eva Moskowitz would be laughed out of education if she was covered by many science/medical reporters who are trained to recognize when ridiculous claims of success are hyped. A little skepticism and number sense would go a long way in education journalism. Instead, many education reporters demonstrate their excellent ability to re-write a press release with the minimum of reporting effort and no independent thinking.
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This kind of stuff is why it’s not cute for someone to say they are not a math person. I know it has been said before that no one would be proud of saying they are illiterate (although we may get there!).
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And this creep is also the sane guy who got his organization slapped with one of the highest fines ever assessed in Massachusetts for improper campaign activities during the charter school referendum vote (and the referendum was voted down in huge numbers).
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I love that Eva Moskowitz had no problem with THAT when she promised to provide a highly paid nice landing job for Jeremiah.
What’s wrong with a little illegal activity as long as it benefits the cause of the billionaires whose very generous donations help your bank account, right? I want to hire that man!
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Campbell Brown is paid to only be concerned about what (allegedly – a word she won’t use) happens in community-based, democratic, transparent, non-profit, unionized traditional public schools.
The private sector, extreme right oligarchs and corporate CEO’s that pay her don’t want her to be concerned about their opaque, secretive, often fraudulent, for-profit, private sector businesses.
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Yes, I think the most you’d get out of her is some hand wringing followed by some “all sexual predators are bad” boilerplate. She might also use this as an example of how charters are better at finding them since they got this single fool removed. She will try to spin this to the advantage of her corrupt enterprise.
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This sexual predator wasn’t removed until after a Politico reporter specifically asked about the allegations against him.
They knew about the allegations. In fact, they were so certain of them that as soon as they got a question from a reporter and knew it was going public they fired him. That’s not a coincidence. That means they had that information but were keeping it quiet and presumably letting him leave to take a new position directly with Eva Moskowitz.
This is typical. Remember that Eva Moskowitz knew about the principal’s got to go list and her administrators at Success Academy Cobble Hill knew that the assistant teacher ion the room was questioning the teaching of their highly decorated and praised “model” teacher whose actions were supposed to be followed religiously by assistant teachers.
It wasn’t until the press heard about those incidents that those people were punished.
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Out of curiosity, I’m always curious, I Googled “sexual molestation in corporate charter schools” and Google returned more than ONE MILLION hits in less than half of a second.
https://www.google.com/search?q=sexual+molestation+in+corporate+charter+schools&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-b-1
Is anyone keeping score?
Then, to be fair, I Googled “sexual molestation in public schools” and there were more than 2.6 million hits in a little over a half second. If curious, you can Google that one on yhour own to get the link. It’s way too long to include in this comment.
What does that comparison mean?
From Wiki with links to references: “As of 2016-2017 there were an estimated 6,900 public charter schools in 42 states and the District of Columbia (2016-17) with approximately 3.1 million students, a sixfold increase in enrollment over the past 15 years.”
“Since 2006–07, the number of public schools has remained relatively stable, varying by about 500 schools or less from year to year,” and there are about 98,000 public schools in the U.S.
“In fall 2017, about 50.7 million students will attend public elementary and secondary schools. Of these, 35.6 million will be in prekindergarten through grade 8 and 15.1 million will be in grades 9 through 12. An additional 5.2 million students are expected to attend private elementary and secondary schools. The fall 2017 public school enrollment is expected to be slightly higher than the 50.6 million enrolled in fall 2016 (source).”
Corporate Charter schools had a bit more than 1-million hits for 6,900 schools with 3.1 million students.
The public schools had a bit more than 2.6 million hits for 98,000 public schools with almost 51 million students.
Using that data, what are the odds that a child will be molested in a for-profit, opaque and secretive, often teacher and child abusive corporate charter school vs. the non-profit, transparent public schools where teachers are offered protection from their labor union and children are protected by laws and legislation resulting from the democratic process as defined by the U.S. Constitution?
If you want to know the difference, do the math.
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I want to draw the obvious conclusion, Lloyd, but there is too little data here to conclude anything about the number of sexual predators that haunt public or private education. I am hoping that in these dramatic numbers there are a significant number of hits that are dealing with the same incident. Whether in a public or private school, once an event becomes public knowledge, there will be numerous reports. Sexual predation makes for dramatic headlines, but I wonder if focusing on the horrendous really helps us highlight the strengths public system designed for the common good has over schools that are businesses torn between serving their students and making a profit. Can anyone think of a profession where those who want to own it claim that professional expertise is of little to no importance? I understand that this post is dealing with sexual misconduct, and we must make it as difficult as possible for such people to get teaching jobs. There is no excuse for not conducting background checks, at the very least, no matter where an individual is teaching. Now, before I go meandering off in another direction, I think I will shut my mouth!
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“I am hoping that in these dramatic numbers there are a significant number of hits that are dealing with the same incident.”
I suspect that is true but … public schools are transparent by law with severe penalties for every teacher for not reporting suspicion of alleged abuse, sexual abuse/contact with an underage student.
And if the ratio of incidents being repeated is correct, then the data I provided still offers a ratio that isn’t perfect but is revealing none the less. Since the media tends to bash public school and praise corporate charters, I suspect that using that data to come up with a comparison would still favor the corporate charters.
Corporate charter schools are another world where secrecy, cover-ups an fraud is the norm because a scandal hurts profits.
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At first one assumes he was drunk, but from other comments, this seems to be a pattern of behavior. That along with his corruptness makes one wonder. Has he no shame? If I were his mother I’d be mortified. Where did he learn those atrocious manners? With role models like that – No wonder women want to call these men disgusting pigs.
Wake up fella – you are not God’s gift to us females.
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By the way, that last part of the above post was a parody. Kittredge never embarrassed himself due to a hot mic of which he was unaware.
Indeed, I lifted that bit from SNL’s take on the ACCESS HOLLYWOOD tape, where Trump does the same thing:
(Go to about 8:55)
Oh, and for the joke to work, it should have read, “Unbeknownst to Kittredge” not the “Unbeknownst to the radio listeners”
What’s also funny about the real Kittredge audio is his response about charters keeping out homeless and disabled kids, and favoring advantaged kids over them… also known as “cherry picking.”.
As the caption indicates, Kittredge’s confused, non-sequitor reply is essentially:
“Look I once taught homeless kids, and therefore charters are wonderful.”
(go to about 03:50)
I’m guessing Kittredge has trotted out that …
“You know, I once taught homeless kids, blah-blah-blah …”*
… in an effort to sexually harass women for whom that sensitive, caring-for-the-underprivileged schtick would work, as it seemed to roll quite quickly off this tongue —- even though IT WAS TOTALLY IRRELEVANT TO THE QUESTION BEING ASKED OF HIM.
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